Dead To Me

by Anton Strout

  “What does he do?” I asked

  She sat up, regardless of the pain she felt. “The Sectarians do a lot of their own dirty work when it comes to the occult. There are times, however, when certain special assignments come up that even they find unsavory, such as hunting their own. They tend to outsource that kind of work, especially when it’s a corporate job. They like to use someone versed in the corporate world as well as wetwork.”

  “So they’ve put a contract out on you already?” I asked. “You’ve only been off the radar for what, an hour or two?”

  Jane gulped. “That’s long enough. Faisal knows I’ve failed.

  “I never gave Jason Charles a second thought before now,” Jane continued. “I wasn’t on the receiving end of his business, so what did it matter to me? And recently there had been some talk about using him against the D.E.A….”

  “They were going to send him after us?” All the politicking Dave Davidson had done between our groups, keeping us civil toward one another, flew out the door. “Just what the hell is this Jason Charles anyway?”

  Jane’s eyes widened. “He’s a corporate headhunter. And if he’s watching my office and handling things for Faisal already, it means I’m on his shit list. So are you, since they’ll send him to finish up what I couldn’t back at your apartment. If we leave the country now, they just might leave us alone.”

  Corporate headhunters. I had heard of them, but until now I had thought they were just a rumor, like government funding. You didn’t want to tangle with one of them.

  “And if we don’t leave?” I asked. “What then?”

  Jane looked ready to pass out again.

  “Prepare to be downsized.”

  20

  I couldn’t leave Jane there for their corporate headhunter to find so (in four separate cabs) I took her to a hotel over on the Upper East Side and checked her in. I headed home around 5 a.m. There was still no sign of Irene and I slept for a fitful three hours before heading up to the Lovecraft Café. I grabbed a coffee and went back to the offices to face the Inspectre. His door was shut and the muffled sound of arguing came from behind it. I sat down and waited.

  I bet myself a new armoire from the ABC store on Eighteenth that it was Director Wesker getting yelled at. It was hard to imagine anyone more deserving of getting chewed out than him.

  When the door to Inspectre Quimbley’s office opened, it shook in its frame and revealed an extremely agitated-looking Thaddeus Wesker. He hadn’t changed since last night—wearing the same suit, tie, and look of disdain. His disdain doubled when he noticed me sitting there waiting, and he stormed off down the stairs. I stood when I heard an exasperated sigh from within the office and walked in to find Quimbley sitting at his desk, his head in his hands. He, too, was wearing the same clothes from last night.

  “Sir…?” I shut the door behind me.

  Quimbley jumped at the sound of my voice, but when he saw it was me, he relaxed. He picked up his glasses, fitted them on his face, and grabbed the folder lying before him. “Simon, please…have a seat.”

  I sat in the leather chair opposite him. “Is everything okay, Inspectre? Director Wesker seemed in a far fouler mood than usual.”

  The Inspectre peered over the top of his glasses at me and smiled. “You noticed that, too, eh?”

  I smiled back cautiously. My limited encounters with my superior left me wary in his presence. Connor was much closer to our Other Division leader. I wasn’t sure how political I should be in responding to any questions concerning my personal feelings about Director Wesker. I didn’t want to step on any toes, so I chose to speak with caution and voice as few of my own opinions as possible.

  “Wesker’s mood on his way out was kind of hard to miss, sir.”

  Quimbley sat silently for a moment, possibly weighing his thoughts. “True.” Another pause. “You don’t like Director Wesker, I take it? Given last night’s events, I mean…”

  “Truth be told, Inspectre, I don’t think I’m in a position to judge.”

  “No?” the Inspectre said. “And why not, dear boy? You must have an opinion one way or the other. Come, come!”

  I shifted in my seat uncomfortably as I thought it over. “Well…”

  Quimbley dropped the folder and softened as he looked at me, his wise old eyes without any gleam of judgment.

  “I’d be hesitant, too, if I were you, Simon. Here you are, so new to the D.E.A. and already dealing with such bizarre and unusual circumstances. You’re worried you might say the wrong thing or drop the wrong word in the wrong person’s ear? Perhaps you’re concerned that if you speak against another agent or director, you’ll be seen as disloyal.”

  I nodded. “I guess that’s part of it, sir.”

  “I want to assure you,” he offered conspiratorially, “that nothing you say here will get back to Thaddeus Wesker. This is not a test of your honor or loyalty, boy. I would simply like to hear your take on the events of last night.”

  If the Inspectre only knew all of the events last night, I thought, he’d kick me out of the Department altogether. I shut those thoughts out of my mind and tried to relax a little, finding, much to my surprise, that I was able to.

  “Very well then,” I said. “No, sir, I don’t particularly care for Director Wesker, not after last night. Coming into my apartment like that…”

  “If you remember,” he said, “I came into your apartment as well last night. A bit winded, to be sure, but I was there also. Yet you hold no ill will toward me, Simon.”

  “Yes,” I countered, “but you didn’t come in flinging accusations…acting like something illicit was going on, that somehow I was compromising the Department.”

  “And why do you think Director Wesker did that, boy?”

  I pondered the question for a moment, but the answer seemed clear. “Because he knows I’m allied with you and Other Division.”

  Quimbley smirked, nodding slowly as he ran his thumb and forefinger through his mustache. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I can see that. But I think you’re barking up the wrong tree, boy. It’s no secret that Thaddeus Wesker has no love for me, but it’s also no secret that there’s nothing he can do about it…yet. Let him gather all the power that he can and then we’ll see.”

  “But then it’ll be too late!” I practically cried out. “And what will he do to you when he does? Connor is just as worried about this. Both of us have questioned his allegiance to the Department.”

  The mirth on his face from a second ago was gone, and had been replaced by a look of utter seriousness.

  “My boy,” he said, “what I’m about to tell you is strictly between the two of us, something only a few other people know around the Department. Director Thaddeus Wesker, head of Greater and Lesser Arcana, is a member of the Sectarian Defense League.”

  Thank God I was sitting, because I felt like my legs had just been knocked out from under me. The very idea that Wesker—like Jane—worked with the people that I held responsible at least in part for Irene’s death made my head spin.

  “I knew it!” I said, punching the air.

  “It’s not like you think,” Quimbley said, waving his hands at me. “It’s terribly complex, Simon, and there’s much that I’m simply not allowed to tell you. But what I can tell you is this: A lot of people who have come to work for us over the years have come to us from…shall we say, suspect backgrounds. Involvement with the dark arts, telemarketing, and worse. Need I remind you of your own life as a petty criminal before coming into the fold?”

  My embarrassed silence was enough of an answer.

  “I have been assured,” he continued, “by the Enchancellors themselves that Thaddeus Wesker is a loyal agent of the D.E.A. He was chosen as the perfect covert operative to send in. Standard black ops work…feeding their intelligence officers misinformation so that we may continue our work here uncompromised. Despite all the running around everyone is doing over your discovery of the Sectarian Defense League, the Enchancellors have known about
them for a while, but we’re stepping up our investigation into them now that it’s public.”

  It slowly began to come together. “So being an evil, abrasive prick is just a cover for around the office? A front he has to maintain so that when he reports back to Faisal Bane, he’s convincing?”

  “Oh no,” the Inspectre said. “He really is a ‘prick,’ as you call him. I personally don’t trust him as far as I can throw him, and given my sad showing of physical fitness last night, it wouldn’t be very far. But someone higher up seems to believe he’s trustworthy, and that is good enough for me. And it will be good enough for you, too, Simon.”

  He picked up the folder before him again as I sat in awkward silence, wondering if I had been dismissed or not. I knew the Inspectre disliked Thaddeus Wesker almost as much as I did, which made it all the more difficult to swallow my own feelings for the sake of such a delicate mission. But I would.

  “Am I in any trouble for yelling at Wesker?” I asked.

  “No,” the Inspectre laughed. “If everyone who ever thought ill of Wesker was in trouble for it, we wouldn’t even have enough people to run the coffee shop out front, let alone the Department.”

  A wave of relief washed over me.

  “Now go home and get some rest, my boy,” he said. “You look positively exhausted. I want you to come back later in the day, though. I need you to figure out three things: One, find out where Ms. Blatt disappeared to. As long as she’s out there missing, she’s still a target for Bane and his cultists and we need to know why.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Two, I need you to find out what happened to Jane after Wesker cut her safety line.” At the mention of her, I held my face like stone, hoping that I wasn’t giving away the fact that I knew exactly where she was. “Like you said, she’s relatively new to the Sectarian Defense League, so we may be able to sway her.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And three, I’m still waiting on that report on the Oracle.”

  “Oracle?” I asked.

  “Gaynor,” the Inspectre said. “The train mystic.”

  With all the craziness in my life right now, I had totally forgotten Gaynor. Connor and I would have to sit down sometime relatively soon and hammer out the details so far on Irene’s case. But first, there was the riddle Gaynor had left us with.

  I nodded to the Inspectre, and headed for the door as thoughts of Irene—and now Jane—filled my head. They would have to wait until later in the day. Right now, the call of sleep was already weaving its comfy tapestry around me and I had a date back home with a pillow that I didn’t want to miss.

  21

  It was just after two in the afternoon when I woke, and despite my growing concern for Irene’s whereabouts and my sequestered cultist hottie’s safety, I had experienced an intensely restful and immediate slumber thanks to the power of sheer exhaustion. As a bonus, there had been only four new calls on my answering machine from Tamara telling me how worthless I was and I had slept through them all. I considered myself doubly blessed on that count.

  Freshly rested, I walked back through the Village to the Lovecraft Café, slowly feeling the worry of the past few days snowball itself upon me as my mind began to focus on my caseload again. When I walked in, Mrs. Teasley was at the rear of the coffee shop divining the location of a lost dental crown for a young couple. Normally I would have listened for a quick laugh and gotten fuel for a whole day’s outrage as to why that old charlatan was still on staff. With everything else on my mind, however, I proceeded straight through the coffee shop and back into the darkened theater. The projector was showing2001 —HAL was explaining to Dave why he couldn’t open the pod bay doors. I worked my way down the aisle to the heavy wooden door leading into our office.

  As I headed for my desk, my mood became even darker. Connor and I were making little progress with Irene’s case. Her disappearance from my apartment last night made it even harder.

  If Irene were just another case, I might be coping better or thinking straighter. But Irene had been more than that. I had enjoyed her presence in my apartment more and more. Then there was the strange kiss I had shared with Sectarian-in-exile Jane.

  Jane.

  I was worried about that sitch also. Maybe I’d gain some insight by reading the little black book of hers I’d found, but I hadn’t dared look at it yet. I was pretty sure it was a diary. I was both afraid and unprepared to violate her private thoughts. Having spied on her was one thing, but oddly enough, reading her diary was a level I wasn’t ready for yet. Everything about Jane threw me. The darkness in her was juxtaposed with a pleasant, earnest personality and what seemed like a desire to please others, and I couldn’t help but admit that I found her damn attractive despite her alliances.

  As I approached my desk, I spied Connor sitting across at his, flipping intently through some books.

  “Hey,” I said in greeting. I looked at my desk in disgust. It looked like a filing cabinet had thrown up all over it.

  Connor smiled. “How ya feeling, kid?”

  He didn’t seem to mind me strolling in midafternoon so I assumed that the Inspectre must have talked to him.

  “I’m better,” I said, not wanting to get into all the dark details of the past twenty-four hours. “Long night.”

  “So I heard,” Connor said, closing the book before him. “Don’t worry. I won’t make you recount the whole thing to me. I’m sure you’ve gone over the good, the bad, and the ugly of it with the Inspectre. Unless you want talk about it…?”

  I appreciated the buddy-buddy effort Connor was extending, but I hadn’t told the Inspectre everything that had happened last night, and I wasn’t going to share it with Connor either.

  Acting all touchy-feely wasn’t something Connor did too often. Usually, he’d give a lecture on objectivity or professionalism, about staying detached from my coworkers and our clients. He took a while to warm up to people. He didn’t talk much about his previous partners in the Department, and he had given me enough of a cold shoulder on the subject that I was smart enough never to bring them up. But suddenly he was being a regular Chatty Cathy. I wondered what exactly the Inspectre had told Connor about last night.

  “Thanks,” I said, “but nah, I don’t need to talk about it. I’d rather we got down to business.”

  “Fine by me,” Connor said. He grabbed up another book and buried his nose in it. After a few minutes, he gestured for me to join him, so I scooted my chair around. He had been a busy little researcher during my slumber this morning, and his desk was cluttered with travel brochures for Las Vegas, printouts of topographic maps, gambling guides, and a plentiful array of playing cards. Anything that might give us a clue to make sense of what we had heard from Gaynor.

  “Any progress?” I asked. “What was it Gaynor said on the train again?”

  “‘Follow the Vegas trail and all will become clear,’” Connor repeated, trying to sound like the mystic, but failing completely. “As you can see, I ransacked the resource room to find out everything I could about Vegas. Even brought in several decks of playing cards my grandmother brought back from a trip there several years ago. I called down to Lesser Arcana, hoping for some help taroting up the cards. All they could spare was a lousy intern and she wasn’t very much use. She was able to tell me some secrets about where my grandmother hid our Christmas presents, but she didn’t give me anything useful about Irene.”

  “Think the Department would spring for two plane tickets?” I asked hopefully. A little investigative work mixed with sun, spectacle, and the gaudy neon paradise of the Strip might be just what the doctor ordered to clear my head.

  “Have you seen the revised budget the Mayor’s Office sent to us?” Connor said. “Davidson dropped off the newest cuts this morning.”

  “Davidson was here?” I asked. “Today? You’ve got to be kidding. The man practically betrayed us at the Sectarian Defense League and now he has the unmitigated gall to show his face here?”

  Conn
or shook his head. “Look, kid, I need you to keep an open mind…the verdict’s still out on Davidson. He’s been a good friend to the Department in the past. You weren’t here last October, but he cleared up this huge fiasco when the Chrysler Building was overrun by a legion of undead from a pet cemetery down by the East River. Things That Go Bump in the Night Division had us all working overtime on the cleanup, but it was Davidson who took the heat for us back at Town Hall. He did his politiciany magic and plausibly denied the whole thing when the media came sniffing around. He’s done well by us in the past.”

  I rose and wheeled my chair back over to my desk.

  “But he’s working with the Sectarians!” I shouted.

  “Easy, kid, easy!” Connor said. “You’re gonna blow a gasket. Look, don’t be such a purist. Okay?”

  “Meaning what exactly?”

  “Meaning that obviously Davidson isn’t a saint,” Connor said. “You wanna know the first clue? He’s a cog in the political machine! That means he’s already tainted. Working as the Mayor’s liaison means working both sides of the fence. He’s probably seen things that would make a hard case like Wesker weak in the knees. Government work is a dirty game, Simon. If we want to stay in it, we gotta step up to the air-hockey table, you know?”

  I nodded resolutely, acquiescing to Connor’s take on the bigger picture. What looked black-and-white to my eyes looked different through his. I had trusted him these past months with my life, and I supposed I would have to trust him on this, too. For now, at any rate.

  Connor picked up one of the Las Vegas guidebooks and thumbed through it. “Care to get back to business?”

  “Any leads popping up with any of the guides?” I asked, settling in at my desk. I opened the left-hand drawer and readied a roll of Life Savers.

  Connor shook his head. “Let me give it a try,” I said.

  I took off a glove, popped half a roll in my mouth, and then reached across the desk for a colorful-looking guide that sported a neon cowboy hitchhiking on its cover. Weller’s Guide to Losing Your Shirt in Las Vegas, the cover read.